THE FAT BALLERINA

She wasn't a ballerina, of course. Fat, yes; ballerina, no. A ballerina is the top female dancer of a professional company, top of her craft, dancing all the major rôles in all the major cities: Gisèle, Aurora, Juliette, Odette, that sort of thing. Paris Stockholm London. No, she just did ballet. Lots of it, mind: five lessons a week and practice at home every morning as dawn rose. She performed in the odd children's show: the Queen of Hearts, Cinderella's Ugly Stepmother, that kind of thing. When the show called for someone taller or more substantial than the leading sixteen-year-old, someone to play a parent figure believably, or just plain someone ugly who could do comedy and look, well - big. And one day she met a man and he didn't notice her (because she was fat) but they became jolly good chums (because she was nice and vitally alive and fun to be around) and, inevitably, they fell in love, she developed self-confidence, she lost weight dramatically and discovered that under all the lard she was actually beautiful after all, so she started using make-up seriously and they got married and lived happily ever after. Of course. But all that is merely the detail: what really matters is how she lost all that weight - or why, or what catalysed it. Because of course, she had always carried that possibility within her, and she had hitherto always ignored the knowledge of that possibility. So why did she do it now, and why not before? That is the crux of it, and of course you want to know so that you could do it the same way and get thin and beautiful and married and happy too, don't you? But it doesn't work that way, like with Christ - you know, he said be perfect even as I am perfect, and they all thought he meant follow the sandal, in other words, be celibate and fast in the desert and wander round telling the world to love each other, and, ideally, walk on water. But what if he meant more - ask questions of the learned cliques (and the dumb ones) even when it pissed them off? Study under wise and knowledgeable scholars from far-off lands and different apparent religions? Break the law if common sense and need appeared to indicate that it would be best? Live according to one's own very different truth, even to the point of seemingly opposing most of the truths everyone thought most important? Allow one's own power to resonate through one from one's own centre, find one's own path - and then put up with all those crowds of lazy or desperate seekers trying to grab the secret and the power off you and repeat it themselves without the hard and harrowing parts? Four-step Christianity was there right at the start, wasn't it? To be continued

Imperfect = Bad

It strikes me lately how our society is becoming obsessed with removing all imperfection - witness the uproar over a few politicians' use of their "work" credit cards for private expenses - most of which, it seemed to me, had been genuinely repaid later, with a few forgotten. In Chris Carter's Ministry, one of the staff members had the job of trawling through lists and letting him know how much was personal and had to be repaid. And as I said at home, before Winston Peters did on the radio - imagine standing at the reception desk of a major hotel going through each and every mini-bar purchase, use of gym, spa, or movie rental, and getting each member of the party to line up one-by-one to pay their little bit. Much more sensible to do it in one lump and apportion it later. No doubt the odd thing will get on the wrong list and the odd MP will cheat, but these should be fixed up quickly and heads should only roll if there has been blatant repeat sneaky use of it. I found myself thinking of TV shows of the recent past - like The Vicar of Dibley - where we are laughing with and at the most imperfect people and yet loving them. The only characters in that show that are not actually certifiably insane and / or mentally deficient are a fat greedy woman and a snooty greedy rich man. David is possibly the most morally upright, and certainly the most intelligent, of the village's native inhabitants, living properly in a beautiful house, wearing the right clothes and talking correctly. And he is the least lovable of the lot - we do eventually come to love him, but it is despite his correctness, success and efficiency, not because of it. It is the quirks and weirdnesses of all those substandard weirdos that make them separate, identifiable people. I'm thinking along these lines because of the no-smoking-for-prisoners ruling coming up soon, as well as the credit card affaire. I can argue both sides of the debate to myself very well - leave the poor lowlifes some tactile pleasure, versus we mustn't contribute to the enforced passive smoking of the staff, nor of the inmates. I don't know which I really think the stronger argument, but I do think our society in general is just trying to clean everything up too much, iron out the wrinkles that make a person or a place memorably who or what they are. All of my favourite people have had characteristics or habits that I really hated - and it didn't stop me loving them for their creative genius or their lovingness or their own peculiar brand of me-ness, as I love cats for their sometimes aloof independence, and dogs for their joyful slobberiness. One of my imperfect idols smokes a particularly nasty brand of cigarette and nips out regularly to swig at a hip flask, a couple are really not very bright, a few go on and on about things I was only mildly interested in, one or two are fat and several have bad breath. The one in whom I have been unable to discern any faults in self-reports a couple of doozies. One proudly kept his flat so dirty that I always arranged a toilet stop before visiting. The one I liked enough to marry, I could list pages and pages of imperfections, as could he of me - up close nothing is hidden. Fortunately plenty on the other side of the ledger is also more than visible.Two people I liked very much took such a strong dislike to each other (one was very arrogant, one very Buddhist, both highly intelligent but the quieter, less arrogant one probably more so) that it was impossible to ask them both to the same do ever again. It didn't stop me liking them both. I liked the abrasive rational pushing and challenging of the arrogant one, and the loving gentle wisdom of the quieter one. Just as, in comedy, I love both the old "My Word" and "Just a Minute" radio quiz shows, where anything unseemly has to enter by stealth and by innuendo - and my word does it ever! AND the brasher, ruder, things like Blackadder, Ben Elton, and so forth. Maybe next time you're tempted to Improve Yourself, you have a look at enjoying life instead? As it is, now. More money, a better figure, less nicotine, etc, will only give you a different style of enjoyment and circle of friends, not necessarily more enjoyment or more friends. Laughs of a different kind but not more laughs. It isn't necessarily greener over there - or if it is, all that leafery has plenty of scope for hiding some whopper bugs.

Coming Up Soon

Wed 23 June 2010 10:26pm Coming Up Soon: "We remember that we remember" - from Kaddish, by Leo Wieseltier.

Hairy Brother and Cat Stevens

Wed 23 June 10:16pm Another strange coincidence - after blogging about Douglas Adams and the other 49-year-old genius I could see happily piffling away with him wittily for all eternity, husband turned on the TV at random and it is a retrospective on Cat Stevens - his "Morning has Broken" played at my brother's funeral, on a big screen, making quite an impression as he was a dead lookalike of my brother at that phase in his life - hairy and bearded - and it was, to my surprise, one of his favourite songs. And I have discovered that a few of my favourite songs were, unbeknownst to me, by Cat Stevens - like "Father and Son." - Teufel

We apologise for the inconvenience ...

As we enter the Quintessential Phase of Douglas Adams's Hitch-hiker trilogy, my mind is constantly doing flips of recognition and adulation. That man was one who saw so much, saw through so much, understood so much, and to top it all off, could express it with wit and a kind of mathematical beauty. My maths didn't go beyond topping the last year of High School, but I sense that he actually understands the higher maths and science whose names he flings so blithely about. No wonder Stephen Fry speaks of him with love and awe in his voice - he's another of the same ilk. And he died at 49 - perhaps he didn't need to live any more. My brother was another hyper-rational genius with a sense of humour and a gift for writing - and he also died at the age of 49. I like to think he and Douglas Adams have now met - despite them both being confirmed atheists - and I am determined to keep his paperback copies of the Hitch-hiker trilogy and beyond, despite their foul, tobacco-soaked smell. They are currently airing on a box outside my front door, but they will stink forever.

Thank Goodness Mother Never Let Me ...

"Thank goodness Mother never let me get that tired." Comment in one of Dorothy L. Sayers's letters, referring to a fellow Oxford student who had studied too much, got into a state, and destroyed her chances at exams. Similar character in "Gaudy Night," nearly drowns, lurking dangerously at the top of Old Tom tower - brilliant mind, but not taking sufficient care of her animal needs. Said animal being coming close to destroying her higher self. Neglect the physical vitality too much, and you don't get an awful lot of higher-order thinking. I have been that tired, and it's no good, and it takes a lot of fun and a long time to recover from it. One of my favourite remedies: Roxie Hart, and watching old Marilyn Monroe films. Reading PG Wodehouse, watching DVDs of Python, bits of Fry and Laurie in their various guises, and now that I am partially recovered, getting gripped by a movie with plenty of emotion in it - childish, clichéd or more "real" - recently, "Me and Marley," "Midsomer Murders," "Oliver Twist" (Polanski's version - recent BBC one next, then I might revert to the musical). Teufel.